


The Catherine Wheel

by Ghislainem70



Series: Overcome [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: First Time, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, PWP, Romance, The johnlock kiss, sensory!sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-07-12 22:50:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7126426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghislainem70/pseuds/Ghislainem70
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Johnlock first time.  Sherlock has sensory sensitivity.  Can Doctor John Watson help?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Catherine Wheel

**Author's Note:**

> In no way do I presume that in describing Sherlock's sensory sensitivity in this fic, that I am speaking for anyone else's experience on this spectrum, for lack of a better term. My words are my own.

“I won’t go back,” John said, “to the way things were.”

Of course not.

“The way things were,” Sherlock said. The way things were - 221b, solving crimes, tearing through London streets, John making him feel amazing every time he told him he was amazing. Brilliant. And the quiet times where, if he held his breath and slowed his racing thoughts he could sense something else with them, between them, surrounding them. It surrounded them now.

“I swore that when I came back, I would tell you,” John said, very serious. Here was Sherlock’s sentence, about to be pronounced. “Sherlock – you see everything. You observe – everything. So I know that you know. What I feel.”

Sherlock leaned in closer to John. “Yes. John,” he said. “I know.” And he did. Time to stop this wilful blindness. To look at himself, look at John. And see the truth. “But … I think you should tell me.”

John was close enough that Sherlock could see the flush climb his neck and over his face, and he thought it was beautiful. He watched the play of emotion over John’s face, no longer remote and closed but rumpled and warm and determined and brilliant and true.

“Sherlock – Sherlock, I want -“ he took Sherlock’s hand, and Sherlock was proud that there was no flinch, even though it felt hot and perilous. “I’m in love with you. I always have been,” he said, firm and steady. “But I can’t go back. To what we were - before. Not after – It was killing me inside. Because I know you never… ” He didn’t have the will to say the rest.

Sherlock looked down at their clasped hands. Love. He had always thought it a dangerous disadvantage. A chemical defect of the losing side. But it didn’t feel like that now. It seemed he had been wrong, after all. Insufficient data.

Which, of course, should have been obvious.

John was right. There was no going back.

_(I imagine John Watson thinks love is a mystery to me – but the chemistry is incredibly simple, and very destructive.)_

Sherlock slowly pulled John’s hand in his up to his cheek. He closed his eyes and let the electricity crackle, flame burn. He had been wrong again.

The chemistry wasn’t simple at all.

Every elemental atom that comprised his body was rearranging, dancing, glowing, shimmering.

If this was destruction, he would let it take him apart.

“I don’t want to go back, either,” he heard himself saying.

John leaned in, pulled Sherlock into his arms. He held him close for a long time, a few silent tears dampening the collar of Sherlock’s coat. He pressed the side of his face against Sherlock’s throat, where he could feel his pulse pounding. Elevated. Irresistible. He couldn’t help letting his lips brush gently against that very spot, his own pulse racing to catch up. This was such a transgression that he held himself back from pressing in harder, turning it into a kiss. Into more. And so, was prepared for the completely expected flinch as Sherlock shrank just slightly from his touch.

John immediately released Sherlock, feeling sick. It was true. Sherlock had never wanted this, had made that perfectly clear from the day they met. Nothing was going to change that. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I won’t –“

“No,” Sherlock said, “It isn’t you.” In fact, he was processing the feedback from his hypersensitive nerves, perceiving that in this instance, his reaction was habit, instinct. John’s arms around him felt strong and safe after his long exile. John’s mouth on his throat felt hot and dangerous, and completely different than anything he had felt up until this moment. It was like finding that he possessed a previously unknown sense, or perhaps it was just that his senses were becoming overwhelmed all at once.

As a child, when the flood of perception, observation, endless details, sights and sounds, it all became Too Much, overload happened. Then, he sought the dark places in the house where it was quiet. Always, human touch was overwhelming, unpleasant, threatening. Dark rooms didn’t help for that; for that there were clothes and coats, gloves; keeping people at a careful distance. People generally wanted to keep their distance from him anyway. Sociopath. Freak.

“John, it’s not you - it’s never been you. I’ve always been like – this,” he said, fast before he lost the courage to spill it out in the face of John’s crushed expression. “It’s a … condition of the nervous system. I have been trying to… face it. Go past it,” he stammered. Impossible to explain what he meant. He wasn't sure himself.

John’s face transformed into a concentrated frown, then disintegrated into mixed pity and shame.

“God, Sherlock. I’m a doctor. I should have seen the signs. I’m so sorry — you don’t have to –“ John made a confused motion as he wrestled with his impulse to hold Sherlock and the need to draw away, out of Sherlock’s personal space.

“John - “ How to say it? He had only very recently begun to accept that he could perhaps change in this, if only by degree. But he wasn't sure if he even wanted that, except. . . He paused.

“John. I– I can’t go on like before, either. I want this,” he said, and he knew it was true. “I can show you,” he said, and he hoped he didn’t sound as desperate as he felt. To think that he might have gone his whole life without this.

John’s face radiated purpose, desire. Love. It always had, really. He had been a very great fool.

“Do you mean – there are ways you… like to be touched? And ways that you don’t?”

Sherlock nodded. “I think that if it is you, John, the latter is likely to diminish.” He flashed a rare smile, because he could trust John, and John was a doctor as well as a soldier. He was brave and he knew how to heal. “Shall we find out?”

He reached out and pulled John back into his arms, and thrust his fingers into John’s hair, which prickled his fingertips, and which he wanted to explore. He closed his eyes and guided John’s mouth back to his throat. John delicately brushed his lips against the skin there, pale and delicate over the veins, and he shivered. John paused and Sherlock could feel the warmth of his breath there. John had never been so close. No one had. The warmth of it filled him up after so much cold. How to explain? The light touch made him shiver and his skin prickled and fairly crawled with the buzzing of his nerves. This was familiar, this is what touching always felt like but because it was John, it was not entirely unpleasant. But there was something that John could do that would make it feel much, much better. He held himself still against the electric protestation of his twitching nerves.

“It is easier for me,” he whispered, “if you touch me …harder.”

“You’re sure?” John’s voice was dark with suppressed emotion, that Sherlock observed and catalogued and decided if it was the last thing he did, he would set it free.

“Yes. Harder.”

“Oh, God,” John gasped, and pressed harder, and when Sherlock murmured “yes, more, like that,” to let him know that it was fine, he pressed in harder still, and everything became infinitely better. His nerves still crackled and sang– but the last thing he wanted now was to pull away. He tried to stop his hyperactive brain from cataloguing the feel of John’s strong arms around him, the feel of John’s body, taut, more sinewy than he had been, the feel of his warm skin against his neck, his lips pressing not gently, a hard burning kiss, his hair, the scent of him. He drank it in, deliberately not closing himself off, no shielding, no flinching, and everything all at once was too much – touch and sight and smell and even the sound of John trying to stifle a moan against his neck - and it was this last assault on his senses, the scent, that sent him over the edge. Before he knew what was happening he had pushed John away, pulled him onto the bed, and was sitting with John pinned under him. John stared up at him, his breath coming in harsh pants now that he tried to slow.

“Oh my God, are you – are you all right? I’ll stop,” John said, and Sherlock observed - even here, now, always observing - that the tone of his voice, deeper, rougher, was an infallible sign that the last thing John wanted to do in this moment was stop. “We should stop,” John gasped.

“I want to try to kiss you,” Sherlock announced decisively.

As if he had the slightest idea how to do that.

###

Sherlock leaned down close, imagining kissing John now.

But he was confused by the cascade of neural stimulation – the sight of John’s face, contorted into what seemed to be pain, but wasn’t; the sound of his rough gasps; the feel of his wrists pinned beneath his hands, where he could feel the pulse hammering. John’s skin was warm, becoming a little slick with perspiration. Most intoxicating at all, the little involuntary shifts of his hips under Sherlock’s, the forbidden feel of the long length of him.

John’s tongue emerged briefly to lick his lips. He hovered there, their breaths mingling, hearts pounding. Sherlock imagined what it would feel like to have those lips under his.

Sherlock had been kissed before. Not often, and never for more then a few awkward seconds, unpleasant thrusts of foreign tongue before he withdrew, repulsed. The intrusion of another’s wet mouth was intolerable. Could, would this this be different? With John so impossibly near he craved more, everything: more touching, hands and lips and tongue and …

Sherlock had been frozen above John’s lips for longer than he had realised. Drinking in sensation, trying to absorb it. Letting it wash over and through him.

“Sherlock, please,” John whispered. “Kiss me.“

The bloom of arousal in his body expanded, spread.

He wanted to explore. That seemed necessary. But he couldn’t concentrate while John sounded like this. He raised a fingertip and drew it slowly around the edges of John’s lips.

“Shhhh,” Sherlock said.

John stopped talking.

His mouth was so small, almost delicate. His lips parted a little under Sherlock’s exploratory finger. He felt John’s warm breath, watched his eyes close, trying to master himself, holding it all in. Sherlock pressed a fingertip, slowly, just parting John’s lips, and John made a soft hum of either encouragement or frustration. A hard throb shot from his fingertip down to the base of his cock, where it poured out and spread like warm honey. He imagined his fingers disappearing between John’s lips, the slick sensation of John’s tongue on his fingertips, the sharp edge of teeth, the tingle and pricking of it.

John groaned louder. Exploring wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. He withdrew the fingertip and lowered his mouth to John’s.

“Don’t move,” he breathed as he pressed his lips down, “please.“

After the shock of newness, the feeling was … he couldn’t describe it. Dreams he had had of him and John, visions of skin and lips and limbs, were nothing to this. So close. His cock locked against the helpless shifts of John’s hips. John’s hands, trembling from the effort of obeying Sherlock’s demand to be still. Sherlock licked and pressed his lips against John’s over and over, entranced. John arched up, opened his mouth, invited Sherlock in.

Sherlock mirrored John’s movements. Tentatively, then deeper. Nothing like the foreign intrusion of other, experimental kisses. The union of lips and tongue and teeth was turning his vibrating nerves into tendrils for the transmission of heat. Pleasure. Desire. Love.  
John’s iron self control was beginning to crumble. He had worked one hand free to bury his fingers in Sherlock’s hair, pull him in deeper. Sherlock wanted more but he felt a growing claustrophobia. He needed to stop. It felt like being consumed. He tried to push away the instinct to withdraw into the battlements of his own defenses.

But his body couldn’t relax as it now seemed more than lips were involved in kissing. It should have been simple, this meeting of body, mouth, cock. It felt devastating. It felt like he was going to come apart. Overwhelmed, he tore his mouth away.

“Tell me. What you feel,” John said, caressing his cheekbone, in wonder that they were here, they were together, at last.

This was exactly the right question, one he was struggling with. Everything felt… invaded. The sensation of John’s strong body locked against his. His skin on fire beneath his clothes. He instantly wanted John’s lips back under his.

"It feels . . . dangerous,” he whispered finally. Because it was true.

"It is. Dangerous. Can’t you feel it?” John pressed up against him. “Let me touch you,“ he whispered, trying very hard, Sherlock could see, to be gentle, careful. Not believing, really, his request for deep, hard touch. “I would never hurt you,” he said. "But, Sherlock– have you? I mean- ”

Now they both were flushing. Sherlock looked down. “No. Yes – No. Not like – this.” How to tell this? On rare occasion - experimentally …he had tried. Touching a stranger – dull, predictable, or repellent; allowing himself to be touched by strangers - worse. And nearly everyone was a stranger. Except John. Drugs helped - but he couldn’t tell John that.

And so he thrust his fingers into John’s hair again, pulling a little, which had the effect of driving the ugly memories away.

* * *

John’s hands caressed Sherlock’s back, skimmed around his waist, along his thighs. Beneath his skin everything was shifting. He felt an irresistible pull and let his hand press into the outline of John’s cock, his heart racing, his own cock pulsing in sympathy. John gasped. Intoxicating. He caught himself trying to measure his own racing pulse rate as he imagined what would happen if he opened John’s trousers. Right now. But John firmly pulled his hand away.

Because he didn’t know what to do next, and because John always knew what to do, he rolled away, dizzy, nearly knocking John off the bed. He took one more deep breath, taking in John’s scent almost as a tonic for courage before laying back and silently offering himself up to John.

John ran a steady hand down his chest, then pulled him in close. “Sherlock. I won’t – we shouldn’t – not the first time – you understand?

Sherlock wanted to argue with this. How dare John decide what was too much for him? But when he saw the strength in his face, his entire body wanted to curl beneath John. Press up, under him. And then John would –

John was pulling off Sherlock’s coat, pressing hard kisses through his shirt, against his collarbone. This felt wonderful and he murmured, “Yes.” His entire body radiated that essential word, the only word in the world, “yes.” John tossed the coat aside and began to undo the buttons of his shirt, reverently parting it to expose his pale chest. There was a long silence punctuated by their ragged breathing.

"You’ve been killing me by inches, Sherlock, all this time.”

Sherlock wanted to argue that, John had it backwards, wrong. This love had brought him back to life by inches. But words wouldn’t come. Instead, he pulled John’s hand to the bare flesh of his exposed chest, over his heart.

John’s first touch stung, too feather light, tentative. Sherlock twitched back, his skin shivering under John’s exploring hand. John frowned, cursing himself under his breath.

“I’m so sorry,” he gasped, pulling back. At Sherlock’s agonised expression, he resumed the touch. “Is this – “ his hand pressed in harder, stroking his chest, around his belly, a slow sensual figure eight. Sherlock felt every groove and callus, the edge of a sharp fingernail, rough skin against smooth. Watched John watching his face intently. Feeling the slight tremor in John’s body. Nervous electricity marched up and down, distracting, pulling his attention away from where he wanted to be. What he wanted to feel. He gritted his teeth, but it was no good.

He grabbed John’s hand.

“Tell me. What that feels like,” John breathed into his ear, not as discouraged as Sherlock expected him to be.

“It’s – your skin, my skin – your hand – it’s too, it’s too-“ he struggled, stammering – “It – Wait, wait. Try again. I don’t want you to stop,” he said passionately. John would never want him like this.

He was untouchable.

Frustration surged through him, threatening to detonate. John looked steadily at him and Sherlock just stared back, inarticulate. John nodded, stroked his hair a moment, then turned away, seemingly ignoring Sherlock’s distress. He leaned over, found his coat, rummaged in the pocket. Sherlock felt the disconnection as a painful severance. He wanted John pressed against him, hard, to warm him and to steady him. He grappled at John’s shoulder, trying to pull him back, craving the contact even more now that he had pulled away.

Now John was stripping off his shirt, then his undershirt. He threw them down. Sherlock had only ever caught glimpses (not really inadvertent) of John unclothed. Here was John’s bare skin at last, slightly golden and flushed-looking, bloody sublime scar at his shoulder. His own private supernova. He wanted to lean in and –

John held him down, his face passionate and serious. “You don’t really know, do you, love. What feels good.” Sherlock shivered to hear John call him “love.” He swallowed hard. True. Pushing away greedy strangers who repelled him had not been the most effective means of gathering data as to what did feel… good. He could see that. He knew how to touch himself but rarely did until it the need became an aggravating distraction. Drugs used to be better, anyway. Mostly. He wanted something different now. He had for a long while. He squirmed and reached out for John again to cover his confusion.

“No,” John said firmly. “You. Just you.” He was tugging at something. John’s hands were sheathed, he now saw, in leather gloves. “Tell me if this is better.”

Sherlock, always processing, enumerated their qualities: Black. Leather thin. Supple. Soft. He relished the moment of surprise that John would do this for him, with him. He sighed in anticipation.

John dragged a single gloved hand over Sherlock’s chest. Pressing deep and firm in the slow figure eight. The prickly, dangerous feeling of moments before evaporated. John’s hands felt… luscious, and he had never experienced that feeling before but it seemed the proper word. He lay back and watched the black glove stroke his body through lowered lashes. Watched John watching every shift of muscle, every hitch in his breath. Listening to the entrancing sound of John’s breath coming faster even as he held himself in check. There was a low growling sound and it was coming from his own throat. Emboldened, John ran his gloved thumb down his belly, where he wanted more warmth, more …his entire body arched with the electric thrill of it.

"Stop?” John whispered. Sherlock shook his head. John bent and hovered over Sherlock’s lips, as Sherlock had done to him. He took a gloved finger and traced the lush lower lip, then the cupid’s bow top. “I want your mouth on me,” John said hoarsely. “Please.”

"Where?”

“Anywhere. God,” John whispered as Sherlock tentatively brushed his lips against John’s neck. “Show me. Like you want it,” he said, and Sherlock experimented with pressing in harder. Sucking. There would be a bruise. Yes. Sherlock visualised its size, its shape. The colour of the bruise he would make against John’s skin, purple against pale gold. A mark in the shape of his own mouth. He sucked harder, scraped with teeth into the warm skin of John’s throat, while John’s gloved hands caressed him and stroked him.

His blood felt as if it had been replaced by something hot and combustible. “John,” he gasped, pressing his forehead to John’s, “it feels … like coming apart.” It was the truth. Any minute now he would light up and fly apart, a Catherine wheel, all sparks and coloured flame.

“No, no,” John whispered gently, holding him close. “I won’t do that to you.“

“But-- I want you to. Please. John.” His body was suffused with opposing sensations: of the crackle of antagonised nerves, of the spreading heat of desire, unfolding, filling him up.

John pressed a trembling kiss along his cheek, and whispered in his ear, “Look down then, love,” and they both looked as John’s gloved fingers unzipped his trousers. "Can I touch you? Do you want that?” Sherlock turned his face into John’s neck, his face felt like it was burning but he whispered, “Yes,” and his brain echoed yesyesyesyes. John pushed a gloved hand down and stroked. He was so hard that it seemed impossible that this could be endured. He wanted John to keep on, pull off his clothes, touch him everywhere with those soft black gloves. John’s hand was shaping the dancing, shimmering atoms of his being into a strange new element, incandescent and indestructible.

“I do love you,” John whispered, and Sherlock whispered back solemnly, "I love you, John,” as he started to shake.

He clung to John when the Catherine wheel at last did sparkle and flare, spinning fast, faster, and finally bursting, a kaleidoscope of light. John held him and kissed his hair, stroking him everywhere with hard long strokes that soothed him as he shuddered down to earth, back to the bed, the room, and cold radiating through the windowpanes. He pressed in closer, his nerves not protesting now but yearning. He bit and licked, exploring John’s mysterious scar (a topic verboten, always, before) to distance himself from the growing awareness of the cataclysmic shift in the laws of his universe.

Sherlock had never had any use for astronomy. His mind drifted between two opposing states: the desolation of the long separation from John, and the euphoria of this miraculous restoration. But he floated somewhere dark and starry, a hurtling comet wrenched from its path by the intervention of a dark star, irresistibly pulling him into its orbit.

His brain kept on, connection upon connection: supernova, comet, orbit, dark star. Star-crossed: destined lovers, whose path was crossed by a malign star.

He let John hold him close as he stared through the dark window.

He reached out his fingertips and touched cold glass, and caught a glimpse of the stars, faintly twinkling.

**Author's Note:**

> Some of my faithful readers may remember a version of this first time from my casefic The Enigma Variations. I felt like sharing it as a standalone, and now it works for me even more post S3 although I have left the context open-ended here.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Catherine Wheel [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7155215) by [Lockedinjohnlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lockedinjohnlock/pseuds/Lockedinjohnlock)




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